Archives

Categories

Meta

Bangkok and Chiang Mai

So, we are now 9 days into our trip and we have experienced some crazy and wonderful things in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Our flight was amazing and I would recommend Jet Airways to anyone. The plane was pretty empty so we had a row of seats to ourselves, each chair had it’s own interactive screen with games and new films. We watched The Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle, on the way to Mumbai and ate some pretty decent Indian food and drank as much as we wanted.

When we arrived in Bangkok were overwhelmed by everything but really struggling due to tiredness. We opted to get a taxi directly to our hostel thinking that this journey would be straight forward and pretty quick. We were wrong. Our first 2 hours in Bangkok were spent crawling through traffic whilst watching motor bikes weave in and out of the cars. Next thing we know one of the motor bike drivers had been wiped out by a car and was on the floor. First rule of Bangkok, be extremely careful with the traffic because it’s unpredictable.

We eventually made it to our hostel, Nap Park, on Khao San Road. Khao San is famous for being a lively hub for the backpacker community in Bangkok and this was obvious from the start. Long haired hippy looking travelers and young western fun seekers dominated the streets. The place really came alive at night and the bars were thriving! Our first meal in Thailand was bought from a street food vendor on Khao San Road. 2 portions of Pad Thai and 5 spring rolls came to 110 Baht which works out as £2!!! Not only was it cheap, but it was amazing too. On that night we went out with some fellow travellers from Nap Park and partied on Khao San Road. It is literally mental. Every bar is bouncing and selling booze but the bucket load, street food stalls are everywhere and a pop up market runs through the whole street. We bought 2 pairs of Havaianas for 350 Baht and Kelsey got some baggy hippy pants/trousers for 130 Baht. Everyone told us that we are meant to haggle,which we did, but at these sort of prices we were happy regardless.

Oh yeah and Dan ate a scorpion.

On the May 2nd it was Kelsey’s birthday and we had booked a really nice hotel on, Soi 33, Sukhumvit Road. It was such a nice place and it was huge. It was more like a luxurious one bedroom apartment than a hotel room. We spent the day sipping cocktails at the roof top poolside. We were splashing around in our swimming gear on the top of a 10 story building surrounded by sky scrapers and city life. We then ordered room service and drunk the expensive beers from the mini bar. We were absolutely thriving. On the night time we stayed local and watched some live music at The Londoner Brewery. It is an English style pub with a Thai edge. It was really good fun and we had a tab open all night which ended up costing way more than we anticipated and required me to run back to the hotel to get our debit card. Second rule of Bangkok, be careful what you spend because not everywhere is cheap!

We spent 1 more night in Bangkok and we decided to pay a visit to the ladboy cabaret. It was pretty surreal. The next day we were off to Chiang Mai to stay at Julie’s Guesthouse. The guesthouse is immense and the staff are so friendly.We have the most expensive room in the place which is 500baht/£10 a night. They offer beds in the dormitories for as cheap as 80 baht/£1.45. It is crazy cheap! The city itself is immense, it is much friendlier and more chilled than Bangkok. It is easily doable on foot so you don’t have to constantly barter with taxi drivers. Luckily, we arrived on a Sunday just in time for Sunday Walking Street which is a weekly night market that takes over the area on the inside of Tha Pae gate. There are hundreds of stalls selling clothes, handmade crafts, souvenirs, food, drink and much more. It is packed out with a mix of locals and tourists/travelers. We spent our 2nd day walking around some historic temples followed by a Thai cooking course which was surprisingly fantastic. We got to prepare, cook and eat 4 Thai dishes which we chose from a menu. It was 4 hours of cooking and eating, and we managed to create some pretty good grub. Oh and halfway through the cooking course, all going well, and there is an earthquake! The floor shook and the building rattled. Everyone stopped and looked to the Thai people for reassurance and they were all running outside and panicking. It turns out that it wasn’t too bad for us because the actual earthquake was 115 miles away in Chiang Rai. Supposedly it was 6.2 on the Richter scale but I don’t think there were any fatalities.

Dan with some of the ladyboy’s after the show.

Man making glass souvenirs at the Sunday market.

Dan setting fire to his eyebrows

Our Certificates for completing the course.

On our 2nd full day in Chiang Mai we arranged to go on a trip to the jungle in the north. We booked it through our hostel so we knew it was going to be quite touristy, but it involved riding elephants, white water rafting and jungle trekking, so we couldn’t resist. It was really really good and definitely one of our best days so far but we wouldn’t do it again. We were really looking forward to spending some time with the elephants but it was pretty upsetting to see the way that they are worked and treated. They are chained up when nobody is riding on them and, from what we saw, they spend the rest of there day walking up and down the same path with tourists on there back. We named our elephant Hercules because of his sheer size and strength. At one point we thought he was about to end it all as he was heading straight for the edge of a cliff, with us on his back, until the trainer managed to call him over to safety. All in all, we learned from our mistake and will choose our excursions more wisely in future. We plan on saving a bit of money and spending 3 nights at the elephant sanctuary in Ayutthaya to get some real positive experience working with elephants.

It is time to say goodbye to Chiang Mai for now. We have a coach booked to Ayutthaya at 8pm tonight to begin the next part of our journey…